Baseball in Korea

We finally got our chance to go to a baseball game today!  Doosan Bears vs. SK Wyverns.  Since the person that got us the tickets is a big Doosan fan we sat in the Doosan section.  The game was at Jamsil Stadium which was built for the 1988 Summer Olympics.  It is also right next to the main Olympic Stadium and the Swimming Complex which were all built for those Olympics.  Baseball in Korea is VERY different than baseball in America!  For one thing, when your team is up to bat all you do is stand up and dance and sing.  Each player has a different song that plays when they come up to bat and each one has a different cheer or dance that is done while they are batting.  I wonder how they decided who got to have Gangnam Style as their song...  They have cheer leaders for the time in between innings and a guy that leads everyone in the dance/song/cheer during the innings.  We had a good time.  Another teacher, Melanie, came with us also.  It was fun but I'm not sure we would rush back to another game.  The seats were very small (almost worse than an airplane) and sometimes it was difficult to see since most people stand up the whole entire time.  Also, there was no seventh inning stretch where they played Take Me Out to the Ballgame.  We heard the music to the song playing at one point, but no one was singing the song.  It was definitely a fun experience though!  The weather was great and the music was fun, some was English some was Korean, but definitely different than how I am used to enjoying a baseball game back home!  SK beat Doosan 5-1.  As for the food, there were a lot of little carts outside the stadium selling things like kimbap and dried squid, along with Domino's Pizza, Burger King, and KFC.  Inside was pretty similar.  We all got some Burger King outside before the game.  We were all too worried about breaking up the synchronized dancing during the game to walk over people and go and get anything else inside the stadium, but we did make a Taco Bell stop on the way home!  If you have not seen/heard Gangnam Style yet you can find it on Youtube but it is currently the most popular song and dance in Korea, maybe in America as well. We got a great video of the Doosan mascot doing the Gangnam Style dance.  The file needs to be converted to a new format but as soon as Eric does that we will put it up!

 We bought a set of clapper sticks (we had to fit in somehow!)

 The view from our seats was pretty good!

Doosan Bears mascot